


They Come In Threes

by RoryKurago



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Mark I Glory Days, Secret Santa, Surfing, Team Hot Dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tamsin is determined they will learn how to surf. She's in remission and reckless: she charges into the ocean like her presence there is a defiance of the Blue in the water. Mako watches from the shore with slightly more reticence, small in her new blue-and-white striped bathers, clutching the rope handle of a softboard.<br/>It’s Christmas 2016 on Oahu, Tamsin is in remission, and Stacker is learning how to be a father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Come In Threes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Confabulatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confabulatrix/gifts).



> (With huge thanks to artificiallifecreator for the tireless attention and suggestions.)

Tamsin is in remission and reckless. She charges into the ocean like her presence there is a defiance of the Blue in the water. (Of acidification and decay, hers and its.)

Mako watches from the shore with slightly more reticence, small in her new blue-and-white striped bathers, clutching the rope handle of a softboard.

Stacker watches, considering prompting her to follow Tamsin in – letting her know she doesn’t have to if she’s afraid –

Mako strides out before he lifts his hands: one foot after the other in gigantic steps down the sand, towing the softboard. (Seven years from now, this is what he’ll think of when a Jaeger drags an oil tanker out of Hong Kong harbour.) Her eyes are locked onto Tamsin’s head bobbing beyond the breakers like a target as Ranger-mine (ex Ranger) fights her way onto another board like she’s muscling past bouncers.

Stacker needn’t worry: Mako is not afraid of anything anymore. (That’s a lie. But she’s working on it.) 

It’s Christmas 2016 on Oahu, Tamsin is in remission, and Stacker is learning how to be a father. 

 

……

 

Tamsin is determined that they will learn how to surf. She slapped a colourful flyer on the table the day they set down bags in the rented flat.

“I’ll pass.”

“Mako’ll want to.”

“We’ll see.”

Mako appeared in the doorway of her room. “Tamsin-san?”

Tamsin turned to her with the biggest shit-eating grin Stacker had seen in months. “Miss Mori, would you like to learn how to surf?”

Mako hesitated. Looked at Stacker.

He thought she’d say _no_ ; stick with something more familiar—build sand castles on the beach or—

“Sensei, I would like to.”

Building walls was never Mako’s thing. He didn’t know that yet, but he was learning.

Tamsin quirked a triumphant eyebrow at him.

Co-pilot and ward bounded out of the apartment with PPDC-funded credit cards in hand, shopping in mind.

“Gonna a be a rough vacay if you leave that stick up your butt!”

Stacker flipped her off.

(Mako covered her mouth, eyes crinkling.)

Before that: he stopped himself suggesting they take an escort. Tamsin still gets tired so quickly, but she manages herself just fine. 

So she’d snapped at Stacker when he moved to help her up the duplex stairs.

 

“Sod off. I’m an invalid, not dead.”

Yet. Stacker crushed that thought.

Tamsin still winced. She retreated to the balcony, arms folded against a chill Stacker hadn’t felt in the sticky morning.

“Getting out of the hospital would have been less of a chore if you were,” he offered.

“Always next time, Stacks.”

 

While Mako unpacked her things neatly into her dresser, Stacker took Tamsin a glass of sweet tea.

“And a box of raisins,” Tamsin said approvingly from a reclined sun-chair. “Nice one, fam.”

Stacker sipped his own tea.

“Sorry,” she said at length.

“No need.”

She ate less than half the raisins and barely touched the tea. When she drifted off, her eyes moved restlessly behind the five-dollar sunflower-yellow sunglasses Mako had picked out at Honolulu airport.

When she woke, she ventured to reception and came back with a flyer.

“We’re learning how to surf.”

“Today?”

Her face pinched. “Maybe tomorrow.”

 

First there was shopping.

Stacker raised his eyebrows.

Tamsin raised hers. “ _I_ didn’t pack my swimming cossie for chemo, did I? And I’ve got sweet fuck all t’ wear to the beach.”

Stacker relinquished the envelope the Corps liaison had given him.

“Great. But what’re you still sittin’ down for? Get up, y' div, you’re coming too.”

“Emails.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Marshal.”

“Stacks, we need clothes.”

Mako stepped up beside Tamsin. Her fingers twisted together but she nodded.

Stacker—caught his sigh. Smiled instead. “You go on, Mako. Tamsin knows her way around a department store. She used to scare the shop-girls into fits.”

 

Tamsin told him what he could do with his stick. Stacker flipped her off.

Stacker didn’t suggest they get an escort; Tamsin didn’t suggest he write Herc an email requesting help with his stick. Balance.

Stacker’s relationship with Herc wasn’t something he was trying to keep from Mako; he just wasn’t sure what she would think. She was uncannily perceptive. She also played her cards close to her chest. Was that Mako or four months in the orphanage?

Maybe it was Pentecost: Luna had always kept herself to herself until Tamsin got under her skin and started coming out her mouth. 

He watched them leave from the balcony. Didn’t miss Mako reach for Tamsin when they hit the crowded street; the flinch when she caught herself.

Tamsin took her hand anyway: saw something in a window she wanted Mako to look at and jogged off to investigate.

 

They came back with clothes and vegetables. (A trashy novel Tam threw at his head to let him know they were back.)

Tamsin found herself a bandana in the shops: bubblegum pink, with hearts and skulls. “Whad’ye think, Stacks?”

“I like it,” Mako says softly.

“You still do? Excellent. Stacks?”

“You’re such a punk.”

“Full right. Mako, where’d the soy sauce go?”

Mako silently handed her a grocery bag.

Between them, they co-ordinated the kitchen with a minimum of fuss. Or Mako did.

Stacker watched her carefully slicing up vegetables for a stirfry while Tamsin cackled over the salt content of soy sauce, and had to sit down at a sudden squeeze in his chest.

“Sensei?”

“I’m fine.”

“ ‘f ye’re fine, y’ can come and help,” said Tamsin, pointing a spatula at him.

Mako directed him to stir soy and garlic through the contents of the wok. She wouldn’t cede the knife or chopping board.

When everything was in, Tamsin pulled Mako up on the countertop beside her. “Stacks'll set the table.” She grinned around the straw of a juice box. “Dinner an’ a show.”

Stacker sighed, but Mako giggled. She had a carrot stick in her mouth, a new t-shirt printed with a surfing Jaeger, and an open smile.

He had a daughter.

 

……

 

There are two and a half hours of this surfing lesson. Stacker _was_ concerned it might be too much for Tamsin, but she’s finding it in herself to flirt with the Japanese instructor. He takes that as a good sign.

He kept his reservations to himself this morning; Tam still looked at him warningly over her soggy bran flakes when he opened his mouth to ask Mako for the juice.

(She napped again when they returned from shopping. Always on the side facing the sea. Always facing the blue. Again, she stirred restlessly. Is it being out of the hospital brings things to the surface? Or the fact that feeling less wretched leaves her more energy to probe her other hurts? When she woke, he put the sounds of Luna stretching luxuriantly on a sunwarmed towel out of his mind and hadn’t asked what Tamsin dreamt of.)

From a distance and with the bandana she looks like her old self, elbows on her board as she chats to the instructor holding her steady in the gentle swell.

Mako reaches the break line. She uses her scant weight to push the nose of her softboard under the crest of a baby breaker. It’s a struggle—softboards are not built to submerge. She doesn’t give in.

She’s out of sight for a heart-stopping second. (Coyote Tango sinking with Tamsin; Trespasser concealed all the way into San Francisco--)

She pops up beyond the wave, black skullcap of hair stark against the blue.

Distantly Stacker wonders if she’ll ask later for swimming goggles to protect her from the salt sting. Further out, Tamsin shades her eyes with an arm and hollers, punching the air.

Stacker can imagine Mako’s beam as she paddles up to Tamsin—broad to bursting, the one from when Tam told her the cancer was going, the one when Stacker showed her their plane tickets.

Mako’s arms pull her through the water with strong, sure strokes. She’s finding her rhythm. (She won’t ask for goggles. Stacker will leave a pair on her bedside table anyway. Just in case.)

He hasn’t read a line of the novel since the three women picked their boards up off the sand and set out for real waves. He’s too focused on Mako: her hesitancy visible from his seat under a rented umbrella, her quick glances his direction (triangulating), her growing surety.

At sea, she pushes the board away from her to sit up and angles herself parallel with Tamsin. The instructor stands between them, one hand on each board. With a few brief words, she pushes them apart— far enough to start lining up their own waves, close enough to give either a push if needed.

They drift over the first wave of a set. There are no teeth in this one—

Stacker corrects himself: no power. Funny how when the world changes, everything changes with it.

Like becoming a brother-orphan-only child. Like a second heartbeat in time with his own. (How many times?)

Like a new daughter.

Stacker caught the book Tam threw at his head; Mako didn’t comment, but her eyes tracked every movement. What sort of example are they setting for her? He has to think of that now. He asked Tamsin that before he signed the final papers.

_A bloody good one. Sign the damn forms, Stacks._

The instructor is nodding to the next two waves of the set. _Get ready_.

Tamsin is languid, trailing her arm in the water as she looks behind her. Mako tucks her arms up at her sides like a cheetah.

A little boy comes running up the beach—English from his accent, black like Stacker. He recognises Stacker from the telly, and even if his parents are unsure – awkward at approaching a national hero during his holiday – the boy’s determined to get something signed. A Coyote Tango is produced: one of the basic articulated models, sand-abraded and with the tip of one mortar cannon glued back on, but clearly much loved.

“Sorry she’s a mess—Coyote’s a ‘she’, right? My mate Lex says all Jaegers are girls, but she lies all the time—” He towels the toy dry with loving ardour.

A couple with their own toddler under the next umbrella provide a felt-tipped marker.

“—and anyway, she likes the Jaeger from Japan, ‘cause she likes anime, and she’s never going t’ believe I met you, ‘cause you’re _so_ badass and I’ve had a poster of you ‘n Tamsin ‘n Coyote on my bedroom wall for _ever_. Anyway Lex says she wants to fly one of the helicopters but I want to be a Jaeger pilot like _you!_ ”

He can’t be more than six.

Stacker initials Coyote’s chest. He wants to say ‘Tokyo’. Instead he hands Coyote back, summons a grin and offers the boy his hand to shake.

“I have a better idea: you be a Jaeger pilot like you.”

The boy chirrups a thanks; has to be pulled away by his folks.

Stacker wanted to say Tokyo. He wanted to say _seizures_ and _three hours_ and _43% chance of survival, Mr Pentecost;_ at the back of his mouth he tastes Metharocin through the sticky sweet of pineapple. But at the front of his mind are a blue coat, rubble and one red shoe. When he looks back at the ocean Tamsin and Mako are chasing waves.

Mako isn’t as strong as Tamsin - even emaciated as Tam is by chemo – but she’s dogged. The instructor shouts encouragement as she paddles aggressively for a peak. It escapes. The instructor falls silent as it breaks beyond Mako’s reach.

“Next one,” Stacker hears distantly.

Tamsin caught the edge of it; she didn’t get successfully to her feet, though.

She surfaces spraying water like a blowhole and pulls her board back to her. Her bandana hangs dripping from one hand. She paddles back past the break line and then straddles her board to retie the bandana.

She’s drawing on deeper reserves now: movements slower, energy rationed. But she’s Tamsin Sevier. She won’t say die until she’s stood up in front of a wave. Stacker feels the remnants of the ghost Drift pulling at his brain – a sense of being gigantic and golden – then a shiver of sourness. That too, he had asked Tam about.

She’d put a hand out for his. _We’ll give her everythin’ we’ve got for as long as we’ve got. Jus’ like always. ‘sides, bruv: bloody kaiju couldn’t take you down, piloting solo. How’s a divvy little thing like cancer gonna do it?_

Mako’s gotten herself back into line with the instructor. Both of them are looking out to sea.

There’s a set brewing: two decent-sized peaks gaining speed and definition, and a third - larger than the others - foreboded by a deep trough behind the second. (This, too, will come back in seven years.)

Mako watches it with an alert fixation that Stacker recognises as a hybrid of his own rigid posture and Mako’s raw determination. This one.

While Tamsin dawdles back to the instructor, Mako aligns herself with the first wave. She goes for with vicious single-mindedness.

Tamsin sits up to applaud as Mako skids down crest to whitewater. Pushing up, Mako gets her knees under her. She throws herself back onto her feet.

The blue-and-yellow board vanishes under foam. The split second she’s standing is lost: the board shoots out from under her and jumps riderless into the sky. Mako is dumped backwards into the wave.

Stacker’s on his feet before he’s aware of moving.

Mako pops up ocean-side of the wash. After a second, she shakes hair out of her eyes and gives the instructor a perfunctory thumbs-up. Her paddling is sharper on this return.

Stacker sits down, contritely looking around for the book. It’s facedown beside his chair, several pages rippled against the sand.

Out to sea, Tamsin launches herself down the face of the next wave. Mako shouts encouragement.

Tamsin kneels up less ambitiously than Mako. Only after a few second does she roll back onto her feet. Her arms fly out. She wobbles—then sticks it.

Whooping, she rises from her crouch too fast. The board kicks out sideways.

She comes up laughing. Stacker shakes sand out of the book.

The third wave rears up behind Mako and the instructor. It’s not actually very big, but Mako’s expression is of grim determination.

This one for sure.

She starts paddling. The instructor’s strong push launches her into prime alignment just as the wave begins to crest.

Mako makes one last quick, powerful stroke and _pulls._ The board shoots over the crest and then she’s cutting down the face, already putting her hands in place.

She bounces on the wash. Quickly feels out the rhythm of the ride.

First it’s shoulders up. Her arms snap to full extension.

Bypassing her knees, she jumps straight to her feet, crouching so low she’s almost sitting sideways on the board.

Tamsin turns her own board to catch the wave. Stacker sits forward.

Mako, one arm bent in front of her, tenses her legs and stands.

She rides the wave all the way onto the sand. Half a second later Tamsin stumbles into her, barely upright when she collides with Mako in the wash, hugging her and crowing with elation.

Mako’s smiling when she looks Stacker’s way. He grins wide enough that she must see it, and inclines his head.

Maybe it’s conscious when she mirrors him, or maybe it’s not, but her smile gets just a little bit wider before she turns back to Tamsin to grab the handles of their boards and go again.

 

They ride out several more sets with varying success before the sun starts to sink and they call it a day. The instructor is with another group of students when they run their boards back to the hire hut. She waves at them anyway. Tamsin waves back.

With expressions of supreme satisfaction, they jog back to Stacker’s umbrella. He rises to greet them.

Both of them are sun-pink. Fatigue shows in the way Tamsin drops back as they approach, slowing to a walk. And Mako… There’s seaweed tangled through the strap of her bathers and sand on her chin from where she wiped away salt-spit but her face is aglow with triumph. With Tamsin’s arm crooked familiarly through hers, she looks—peaceful. Knackered, but peaceful.

Stacker gathers up his book and towel. “I think it’s past time for lunch, don’t you?”

Mako nods enthusiastically.

Tamsin releases Mako to grab her own stomach theatrically. “Thank God! I’m bloody starving.”

She takes the towel Stacker offers and heads for the showers by the road.

“What do you feel like for lunch, Mako?” Stacker asks as they follow at a more sedate pace. “It doesn’t have to be ‘proper lunch food’,” he adds, catching her sideways glance. “The Corps sent us on holiday. That may as well have some perks, yes?”

Mako is silent for a while before she answers, and Stacker offers a few suggestions of places that might do.

Tamsin gives her own input and then says she’ll meet them at the apartment. Her eyes fix on something back on the beach. She wants to have a quick word with the instructor. Stacker refrains from commenting on that.

It’s Christmas, six months after they ought to have died, and five and a half years after her wife did.

Tam deserves as much celebration as she can stand.

He and Mako start back to the flat together. They pause to buy fruit salad from a vendor to put in the fridge for later, but it’s hard to resist nibbling one or two pieces.

Stacker should have known something was on Mako’s mind the moment she began toying with the fruit in her cup.

Some day, he supposes, he’ll know her so well.

She artfully spears a bit of paw-paw but holds off eating it. “Sensei… if you were to invite Hansen-san to join us, I would not mind.” She moves the paw-paw to the other side of the cup, freeing up a grape. “Even if he brought Chuck-kun.”

Stacker regards her levelly. They have reached the bottom of the duplex stairs.

Mako lifts her eyes to his. Doesn’t twitch the way she did for months after coming out of the orphanage when an adult looked straight at her.

At last, he inclines his head. “Thank you for saying so, Mako.”

She inclines her head too, then puts the grape in her mouth, closes the plastic cup and follows him up the stairs.


End file.
